I have written several times and have received some good information. I am having problems booting my sons "puter". I made a boot disk from the machine I am now on. Both machines are using the same win 98 software. When I try to boot the other machine I get a "hard drive failure" message. I assume the hard drive has fried itself. I would like to get the puter up and running again. I was told by a computer shop that I need a new drive and that would be around $160-$200. The person who checked it out basically went on the same "hard drive failure" to give me his quote. I really don't want to invest more than $60 or $75 to get this thing up and running again. It is only a 133Mhz with a 1.8 gig drive and am limited as to what upgrades I can do. I am at a loss folks...spend the money on this older system or start all over. I believe I can get my hands on another used machine that I can upgrade and be ahead of the game. I guess what I really need to know if there is a way I can test this machine running in the safe mode and assure that the drive failure is really the problem. Any help will be certainly appreciated. Thanks, Gary

Caution Formatting a disk removes all information from the disk. Your computer may not function if you format the disk (usually the C: drive) on which Windows 98 is installed.

OK, now we have a clean disk, You said you created a startup disk, insert this into the floppy drive. Do a change directory at the C:prompt cd\ enter type a: Enter now your prompt should be A:> type "dir" without the quotes. locate the CD ROM driver and type its name at the prompt and click enter.

After the driver is installed you can insert your Win98 disk and ReStart. At the DOS screen prompt you will be asked if you want to start with CD rom or Hard drive support, select CD rom.